FinAccounting Get started

Accounts Module

Chart of Accounts

The full list of accounts every other module in the app posts against — how it’s seeded automatically for a new company, how to add or reorganize accounts by hand, and the specific codes that other modules quietly depend on existing.

Seeded by company setup Read by Accounting, Banking, Payroll, Sales, Purchases

Start here

1Before you start

You almost never start with an empty Chart of Accounts. The moment a company is created, this module seeds a full starter chart automatically — a set of core accounts every business needs, plus extras layered in based on the company’s industry (retail, services, healthcare, and so on). Nothing here requires setup before it works.

Codes follow a simple range by account type — 1000s for assets, 2000s for liabilities, 3000s for equity, 4000s for income, 5000s for expenses. Leave the code blank when adding a new account and the app assigns the next free one in that block automatically, in steps of 10.

A personal book looks different

A company set up as an individual (personal finances, not a business) gets an entirely different starter chart — Checking Account, Credit Cards, Salary & Wages, Housing, Groceries, and so on — instead of the business template. The two are never merged; you get one or the other based on how the company was set up.

Manage accounts

2Add or edit an account

Click Add Account, or open an existing one to edit it.

FieldNotes
CodeLeave blank to auto-generate the next free code in this type’s block. Must be unique per company (not case-sensitive).
NameThe only field the form actually requires.
TypeAsset, Liability, Equity, Income, or Expense — drives which financial statement this account lands on.
SubtypeCurrent Asset, Fixed Asset, Bank, Cash, Current Liability, Owner Equity, Operating Expense, and so on. Defaults to a sensible value for the Type if left blank.
Parent AccountOptional — see Organize with parent accounts.
CurrencyAlways the company’s own currency. Not editable here — resolved server-side, never trusted from the form.
StatusActive, Inactive, or Archived.
Allow PostingWhether this account can be picked as a line on a journal entry or transaction elsewhere in the app. See Posting & the codes other modules rely on.
Bank AccountTicking this forces Type to Asset and Subtype to Bank, and turns Allow Posting on automatically — this is what makes the account selectable as a Bank Account’s linked GL account in Banking.
Opening Balance / Current BalanceCurrent Balance defaults to whatever you set Opening Balance to, then moves on its own as real journal entries and transactions post against it.
DescriptionOptional notes.

3Organize with parent accounts

Any account can be nested under another by setting Parent Account — useful for grouping, e.g. several bank accounts under one “Cash & Equivalents” heading. An account can’t be set as its own parent, and the app checks server-side that a chain of parents never loops back on itself.

4Posting & the codes other modules rely on

Several accounts in your chart aren’t just entries on a list — other modules look them up directly by code (or, failing that, by exact name) the moment they need somewhere real to post. If the account doesn’t exist yet, the module creates it on the fly using the same code, so posting never silently fails just because a chart predates a feature.

CodeAccountUsed by
1020Operating Bank AccountBanking, as the fallback GL cash account for any bank account with nothing linked.
2020Payroll LiabilitiesPayroll, for net pay owed to employees until disbursed.
20212099“<Label> Payable” (auto-named)Payroll, one per active deduction or tax component you define.
2030Employee Reimbursements PayableExpense Reimbursements.
4010Sales RevenueSales, once an invoice is sent.
4800Other IncomeIncome’s default category for non-operating income.
4900 / 5900Uncategorized Income / ExpenseBanking, when a transaction has no category account picked.
5040Cost of Goods SoldPurchases, once a purchase order is billed.
1200InventoryPurchases, for lines linked to a real product.
59005989“<Label> (Employer Contribution)” (auto-named)Payroll, one per employer-funded contribution.
Rename freely — keep the code fixed

Renaming one of these accounts is safe as long as its code stays the same, since the lookup checks the code first. Changing the code, though, breaks the match: the next time a module needs “Payroll Liabilities,” it won’t find your renamed/recoded account and will silently create a brand-new one at the original code instead — leaving you with two accounts instead of one.

Common tasks

Reclassify cash & bank accounts

If an asset account’s name obviously reads as cash or a bank (“Petty Cash,” “Escrow Bank Guarantee”) but was never actually tagged that way, it gets silently skipped by anything that relies on the Bank/Cash tag — most importantly the Cash Flow Statement. This tool finds those and lets you fix them.

  1. Run the scan

    It checks every posting-enabled asset account not already flagged Bank or Cash, and suggests a fix based on keywords in the name (“bank” or “mobile money” → mark as Bank Account; “cash,” “petty cash,” “till” → set Subtype to Cash).

  2. Review each candidate

    A keyword match is a suggestion, not a fact — “Escrow Bank Guarantee Receivable” would match “bank” but probably isn’t really a cash account. Nothing changes until you confirm.

  3. Apply your choices

    Pick Mark as Bank, Set to Cash, or Skip per account, and apply. Each one goes through the same save path as editing the account by hand.

Cleaning up after switching to Simple mode

Switching a company’s accounting mode to Simple (cash-basis) in Settings automatically deactivates its zero-balance accrual-only accounts (Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll Liabilities, Grants & Pledges Receivable) — a cash-basis company never recognizes these at all. This tool is the manual catch-up version for a company that was already in Simple mode before that automatic cleanup existed.

It’s gated to Simple-mode companies only, and only offers accounts with a real zero balance — anything still carrying a nonzero balance is listed separately as blocked, since silently hiding real money from the books would be dangerous. Resolve those by hand first.

Deleting an account

Two things block a delete: a system account (one the app itself seeded) can never be deleted, and an account with child accounts under it can’t be deleted until those are removed or reparented first.

Reference

Account types & starter codes

TypeCode blockDefault subtype
Asset1000–1999Current Asset
Liability2000–2999Current Liability
Equity3000–3999Owner Equity
Income4000–4999Operating Income
Expense5000–5999Operating Expense

Status is separate from posting: Active / Inactive / Archived just controls visibility, while the Allow Posting toggle controls whether the account shows up in a journal or transaction’s account picker at all.

Two KPIs on the Accounts page are worth knowing: Books Balanced checks Assets against Liabilities + Equity, but only across accounts recorded in the company’s own default currency — anything in a different currency is left out of the check entirely and counted separately as excluded. Anomaly Score is a plain heuristic, not a fraud detector — it flags accounts whose balance has moved despite zero real ledger lines, accounts pointing at a parent that no longer exists, and duplicate codes.

What this module doesn’t do

Foreign-currency accounts skip the balance check

An asset, liability, or equity account recorded in a currency other than the company’s default is excluded from the “Books Balanced” comparison rather than converted — it’s counted separately as excluded, not silently wrong, but it also isn’t reconciled against the rest of the chart.

Reclassification is a suggestion tool, not automatic

The “Reclassify Cash Accounts” scan matches on keywords in the account name only. Nothing is ever applied without your explicit per-account confirmation — see above.

No merge or bulk recode tool

There’s no built-in way to merge two accounts into one, or bulk-renumber a range of codes — each account is edited one at a time.

FinAccounting — Accounts Reference Guide Back to top ↑